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What's New in Mario Party 9? This Trailer Knows

Nintendo's Mario Party 9 is out this week in Europe with a North American release to follow, but if you're not sure what's new in this 11th instalment in the series — don't forget Mario Party DS and Mario Party Advance — Nintendo's put together a video to explain.

The trailer highlights some of the brand new boss fights with Mario series staples including Wiggler and Blooper that await once players reach the end of the board.

That wasn't Gooper Blooper at the end of the trailer. That was a giant-sized, regular Blooper. Although it would've been nice if the bosses in this game were more throwbacks to past bosses like Gooper Blooper rather than giant-sized enemies, they still look cool and I've always enjoyed boss battles.

It's interesting to see the crabs from New Super Mario Bros. Wii return. It's interesting in general that Mario Party 9 has a NSMB Wii theme to it. I went ahead and saw the first ten minutes of story mode, and the game looks very good. It's certainly better than Mario Party 8, so I expect this to be my favorite Mario Party since 4, maybe even 2.

I'm actually glad they changed up the rules, because the problem with the past installments was that they didn't do much to shake things up. Now that Nintendo and Nd Cube made this instead of Hudson, they finally decided to breathe fresh life into the series, and it looks like they certainly have.

I'm feeling pretty hopeful about this one, and it's looking great. The mini games in particular are looking good to me. Finally got some 'freshness' to it as well it seems. I have played soooo much of all the other Mario Party games with people. I wonder if i will still be the minigame champ..

Also, bringing previous party boards or mini-games would have made this better.MP3 - Toadstool Titan FTW!EDIT: Making a mini-game that is completely luck based is hogwash.The mini-games that combined luck with skill made things interesting.[youtube:D3brpBJ0ph0]

I really do hope there's a "classic" mode option available either from the start or an unlock. Please, Nintendo, PLEASE! I appreciate what they're trying to do here but at least give the option. There still seems to be some competition since you have to time your dice block hits to land on certain spaces and obtain the mini-stars, but, there still is nothing like four separate players moving SEPARATELY on a game board. Really don't know how I feel about this installment.